A Brilliant, Fascinating, Integrated Theoretical Edifice

A comment by Margaret S. Mahler, M.D., Sc.D., a Psychoanalyst and Director of Research [Med] at Masters Children's Center, New York

"This cassette contains the most brilliant. thought provoking and comprehensive lecture to be found in the literature on the role of the father in earliest development und the differences in the genesis of core gender identity between boys and girls.

"By looking at surface phenomena and far beyond with his psychoanalytic eye, drawing from his vast and thorough-going knowledge: of psychoanalytic theory: Piaget's classical work on cognitive development: Spitz' concept of the early organizers of the mind: Lacan's distinction between the mirror versus the symbolic stage of mental operations: recent insights of brainphysiology: and, last but not least, the scattered hard data of academic and experimental developmental psychologists. Dr. Abelin succeeds in giving us a fascinatingly complex integrated theoretical edifice into which the data admirably fit.

"Thus Dr. Abelin builds within the framework of the hypothesis of human symbiosis and the subphase-theory of the separation-individuation process, unified interpretations according to what he calls general laws of psycho-biological systems. These interpretations, if confirmed, may indeed revolutionize developmental and c1inical research.

"Listening to this cassette the appetite is increasingly wetted so that a wide range of readers will eagerly await Dr. Abelin's forthcoming book on the subject."